Friday, May 11, 2012

On Friday, we held our annual graduation and volunteer
appreciation celebration. Ten service dog teams and two demonstration dog teams
graduated. We also recognized our two new breeding dogs, SSD Opal and SSD
Scotia, as well as the two dogs that are now working for the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Hawk and Sunshine.

Congratulations to everyone who graduated! It has been quite
a journey.

Every year, we have a keynote speaker. This year’s keynote
speaker, Gina Battaglia, gave a lovely speech about her facility dog, SSD
Jasmine II, and how Jazzie, as they call her, has made a difference in the
lives of her students. We have included her speech below, and we encourage you
to read it. It is truly heart-warming.

Graduation Keynote - Gina Battaglia

I’m a social worker in an intensive therapeutic program for
special education students in a small, rural community in upstate New York. I
work primarily with elementary school kids who struggle with social, emotional
and behavioral issues. Our program is located in a regular, district-based
school, but our students can come from eleven different districts within our
catchment area. So our kids are away from their own schools, friends and
families when they are with us. We sometimes feel like a little group unto
ourselves, watched from afar by the school community with interest and curiosity.
People are polite to us, but no one really stops to chat or interact too much
with us or our students. We sometimes don’t feel a sense of real belonging in
the district.

But that all changed the day Jazzie came along. Actually, it
all changed when word got out that Jazzie was coming. And I am absolutely not
kidding you! The school staff started to visit us at the end of each day to ask
about the progress I was making getting “our dog.” The PTA and local Rotary had
a fundraiser to help pay for Jasmine. I put a giant poster of a black lab up on
the wall by the main door of the school with a big banner that said Coming
Soon!” and at dismissal, the kids would actually stop and talk to the poster
and pet it. I saw several children kiss the poster and say “I love you!” while
touching it gently. Jasmine had already started to make us more a part of the
school just by the anticipation of her arrival. It was really stunning. I
remember thinking, “Wow! If this is the reaction she gets when she’s not even
here, what will it be like when she arrives?” I had no idea!

The first day Jazzie came to school, I brought her outside
to greet the buses. Big mistake! It created a riot! The kids swarmed her and
all I could hear was “I can’t see her! Let me see her! What’s her name? Can she
come to my room? Jazzie! I love you!” I was worried that she would panic and be
afraid. But there she was, in the middle of the crowd of kids, wagging her tail
and licking everyone to squeals of laughter and delight. The magic had begun.

After that, the students in our program became the most envied
and popular in the school. Everyone came down our hallway hoping to get a
glimpse of Jazzie. All the teachers wanted us to visit their rooms and talk to
their students about what Jazzie does. Every day for a while, I would take one
of my students with me, treat pouch and all, and that student would present
Jasmine to an entire classroom of kids, demonstrating clicker training and
telling them how Jasmine helps them feel better in class, be happier during the
day when they are sad, licks their faces if they are crying and lies down on
the bean bag chairs with them while they read to her, her head in their laps.
You have to remember, these are kids who often have extreme anxiety, low
self-confidence and many worries which distract them throughout the day. Our
special education classes are very small. We never have more than six students
in a class in order to minimize anxiety and better address individual student
needs. Suddenly, our little cluster of anxious kids was talking in front of
groups of 21 or more peers and adults with a confidence I had never seen! They now stop and talk with
teachers and high school students as they walk in the hallways with Jazzie
because they feel so proud of her and confident with her. Jazzie gave that gift
to them. There is no way, as their counselor, that I could ever have instilled
such confidence and pride in those kids so quickly and effectively, if ever.
That is the miracle of Jasmine!

One day, I was walking into school a tad on the late side
with Jazz trotting along. The buses were just pulling up to the loop. Suddenly,
I heard the sound of bus windows going down all around the drop off area and
kids started chanting “Ja-ZZIE, Ja-ZZIE!” with their arms waving out the bus
windows. Jazz and I stopped and looked at each other. I think she was as
surprised as I was! She had achieved “rock star status!” We ran into the
building as fast as we could to avoid being mobbed. It was official. She had
won the hearts of the entire school.

Now, with “rock star status” comes a certain amount of
privilege. Jazz had earned the reward of being allowed to walk next to me in
school without her leash. She is good about staying right with me – usually.

The following story is a reason why you cannot become too
comfortable in assuming that your service dog will always listen to you. We
have a door on the lower level at school that leads outside to the playground.
It is usually closed, but it was a particularly sunny day and it was dismissal
time. The teachers left the door open so the kids could go in and out to play
while waiting for their buses. Remember that Jazzie had earned off-leash
privileges now. You can probably see where this is going, right? I had been so
proud of Jazz walking by my side and paying such close attention to me. I did
consider that if she saw a better offer, she might go for it, but that would be
okay because there is nowhere she could really go in the building. I could
easily get her. Well, she and I both noticed the open door to the sunny day at
the same time. I saw the look in her eyes and I knew it was the better offer.
As I was saying “NO, JAZZIE!” she was already bolting down the hallway, through
the doors and out onto the playground. But did she stop there? I wish! I really
should have had my treat pouch and clicker. Lesson learned!

As I said, our school is in a rural setting. There is a
large expanse of undulating lawn with a chain link fence preventing children
from falling into the abyss of a rather large ravine. The fence does eventually
end, but the ravine does not. Pretty scary. Well, I guess in another life,
Jazzie must have been an Olympic sprinter. She took off like a greyhound across
the lawn, running against the wind with her ears flying back, her tongue out
the side of her mouth. She was beautiful! I could see her laughing – she was
absolutely gleeful. I, on the other hand, was terror struck. All I could think
was, “She is going to fall into the ravine, and Kara [one of SSD’s trainers] is
going to kill me for my poor recall ability!” Well, there I was giving my best
attempt at recall while running crazily across the lawn: “JAZZIEEEEEE, COME!
JAZZIEEE, GET BACK HERE!” And I’m thinking, “Look at her! She keeps looking
back at me and running away! Why is she doing that?”

Then I realized there was a crowd of about 150 elementary
school kids running in a pack behind me, screaming her name and laughing. It
must have looked hysterical. I turned to face the throng and with arms spread
wide, yelled, “STOP RUNNING!” You know what? They did! And when they did,
Jazzie did. She just stood there, panting and looking at me bewildered, as if
to say, “What?” I walked up to her, grabbed her collar and marched her back to
the school. Her head was down. The kids all tried to pet her, but I kept going
without saying a word. I heard a teacher say quietly, “You’d better just let
Mrs. Battaglia get her back into the school. I think Jazzie might be in
trouble.” After that, Jazz was back on her leash for a while. So be ready. Your
dog may get a better offer someday.

We’ve used Jazzie in many learning situations. Once, I had
one of the staff members “kidnap” Jazzie, and I hid clues all around the school
so the kids could use their problem solving strategies and team work to find
her, which they proudly did. She has walked scared kids to their mainstream
classes and stayed with them while there. She has been the “prize” in a monthly
drawing (a training session with Jazzie), with tickets earned for showing good
character. She has been loved and kissed and cuddled and has brightened everyone’s
day just by being herself. She has provided a fun way for kids to learn about
themselves, each other and the world and to learn compassion, caring and
responsibility. She is an amazing little princess who has given of herself in a
gentle, sweet manner that has made all the difference for an entire school.

I would like to say thank you to SSD for providing so many
of us the opportunity to live and work with all of these amazing dogs, to the
families to whom the puppies are born and the wonderful puppy raisers who raise
them knowing that they will someday to on to live elsewhere in service to
others. I would especially like to thank Kevin and Carol Molloy, Jasmine’s
puppy raisers, who became very dear and special friends to me. We sadly and
suddenly lost Carol this past October. Although her passing was and is
devastating to all of us, her kind and gentle spirit lives on in three SSD
dogs, and her namesake is currently in training. Lastly, I would like to let
her know something that she frequently asked me. Yes, Carol, Jazzie still does
the “singing yawn!”

No comments:

Post a Comment

Opening Doors and Changing Lives

SSD

Susquehanna Service Dogs raises, trains, and places service dogs to assist individuals with disabilities. We train service, hearing, balance and companion dogs to support men, women, and children to be more independent.